기억 전달자 수업: 아동청소년 과학소설과 미래 세계 그려보기

Teaching The Giver: Picturing the Future World through Science Fiction for Children and Young Adults

This study is based on a course in English literature, in which Lowry Lois’s The Giver is read and discussed along with the topic of science fiction for children and young adults. In its first stage, a heavy emphasis was laid on close reading of the text under the belief that it is the most solid foundation for optimal English literature classes to read the given text as closely as possible. After closely reading the text, students had a detailed discussion to understand the future community depicted in the work. They made a major contribution to the discussion by providing their own answers to the given questions and sharing them with the whole class, and their views were elaborated by the instructor’s supplementary remarks. On the basis of their understanding, students participated in a project of creating a short video version of the future community. They uploaded their team’s files on the online-class site provided by the university, demonstrated their projects in class, and also evaluated other team’s products. Their discussion in the next stage of the course was centered around the narrative of The Giver. In particular, the narrative traits of children’s literature and science fiction were highlighted, and comparisons were also made between the original written text and its film version. After all the steps of the course were taken, a final questionnaire was distributed to check the extent to which students had enhanced their awareness on the significance of children’s literature and science fiction in comparison to the pre-questionnaire given before the development of the main body of the course.